Cairo: The body of a blind Egyptian cleric convicted of plotting terror attacks in New York has been brought back to Egypt for burial after he died in a US federal prison over the weekend.
Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheikh, was arrested in 1993 and convicted in 1995 along with nine followers of conspiracy to blow up the United Nations and several New York landmarks. He was serving a life sentence in prison when he died on Saturday.
Abdel-Rahman was the spiritual leader of Gamaa Islamiya, the most feared militant group in Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s. He fled to the United States in 1990.
Dozens of his followers waited at the Cairo airport on Wednesday to receive the body and take it to his hometown in Dakahliya province.
